When (after a lot of work ahead) the time comes to write books about the 2008 campaign, a couple will have to be commissioned. One, a book about the Obama ground game, should come from Al Giordano, who predicted an Obama victory back in 2007. Frank Rich, the man who wrote The Greatest Story Ever Sold about how the Iraq War came to be, should write the one about the death of the Republican candidate John McCain.
I do not choose my words loosely. Rich's latest column "Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain" is about McCain's death, and the death of the party he purports to lead.
Death in an electoral sense is premature. A month is a long time in politics, and there is a lot of work left to be done to ensure this nation does not remain in the hands of the people who brought you the Iraq War, institutionalized torture, trillion-dollar deficits, the destruction of FEMA and the Justice Department and too many other examples of putting party first before country. There are only a few days left to register new voters in many states, after which time the focus will be on making sure as many people as possible turn out to vote Democratic.
That said, things look really bad for McCain and the Republicans these days. Polls on both the national level and in many states show not only a growing lead for Obama, but the prospects of the GOP losing more House and Senate seats than they had envisioned earlier this year.
Rich notices that the party long thought to be more macho (in its bloodlust and reluctance to reflect before acting) has now become (to paraphrase Phil Gramm) a party of whiners. When Republican House members cry that their feelings were hurt by mean old Nancy Pelosi and so they had to vote against the bailout, it fell to Barney Frank (the man Dick Armey once so charmingly called "Barney Fag" during the era of the Gingrich Revolution) to refer to the House Republicans as acting like "a bunch of sulking teenage girls." This party once known for its testosterone seems in need of a little blue pill.
Which it's gotten. What is Sarah Palin and the "energy" she brings, if not a return to the GOP's glory days of firm action triumphing over nambypamby paralysis by analysis, ridiculing its opponents as weak and unpatriotic, and never, never having to say you're sorry no matter what you've done? Indeed, at the debate against Joe Biden, she mocked the Democrat for attacking the sins of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as a mindset that is trapped in the past rather than looking to the future. The GOP loves Sarah Palin for what she says and how she acts, and they are thrilled with her performance outside of the filter of the annoying media last week.
Just one problem, though. That attack, like much of Palin's candidacy for the Vice Presidency, undercut John McCain's campaign to be president. Every time she mocked Joe Biden for being an old, tired Washington insider, I wondered "do you remember that guy who picked you for the ticket?" Every time she called herself a young, fresh face of new ideas and energy, I asked myself "are you running against John McCain?" Indeed, her answers on bankruptcy protections and civil unions sure sounded like attacks on the Republican campaign for president.
Rich noticed as well. And he doesn't fault her, given how sickly McCain's looked as of late. By this Rich does not mean McCain's campaign, but rather McCain's body, mind, and soul. Yeah, he goes there. MSNBC may have refused to air an ad wondering about John McCain's health, but the New York Times didn't prevent Rich from bringing up that rushed look at McCain's medical records back in May, when reporters had just three hours to pore through 1200 pages on the health of the oldest man to ever try to enter the White House. And the New York Times didn't prevent Rich from writing the following:
Now McCain is looking increasingly shaky, whether he’s repeating his "Miss Congeniality" joke twice in the same debate or speaking from notecards even when reciting a line for (literally) the 17th time ("The fundamentals of our economy are strong") or repeatedly confusing proper nouns that begin with S (Sunni, Shia, Sudan, Somalia, Spain). McCain’s "dismaying temperament," as George Will labeled it, only thickens the concerns. His kamikaze mission into Washington during the bailout crisis seemed crazed. His seething, hostile debate countenance — a replay of Al Gore’s sarcastic sighing in 2000 — didn’t make the deferential Obama look weak (as many Democrats feared) but elevated him into looking like the sole presidential grown-up.
Though CNN and MSNBC wouldn’t run a political ad with doctors questioning McCain’s medical status, [CNN medical correspondent Sanjay] Gupta revisited the issue in an interview published last Tuesday by The Huffington Post. While maintaining a pretty upbeat take on the candidate’s health, the doctor-journalist told the reporter Sam Stein that he couldn’t vouch "by any means" for the completeness of the records the campaign showed him four months ago. "The pages weren’t numbered," Gupta said, "so I had no way of knowing what was missing." At least in Watergate we knew that the gap on Rose Mary Woods’s tape ran 18 and a half minutes.
It is in this context that Sarah Palin is promoting her youth and vitality. Is she working a campaign against Barack Obama or John McCain? Rich goes on at length about how Palin sure seems to want to be President, and her conduct on the trail seems like a candidate promoting herself and not acting as a surrogate for the #1 name on the ticket. Some Republicans may not be sure who they want her to challenge. Those enthusiastic crowds are coming for her, not the old guy who they don't trust.
As the days tick away and the news gets gloomier for Republicans, there isn't a whole lot of hope.
As McCain continues to fade into incoherence and irrelevance, the last hope is that he’ll come up with some new game-changing stunt to match his initial pick of Palin or his ill-fated campaign "suspension." Until Thursday night, more than a few Republicans were fantasizing that his final Hail Mary pass would be to ditch Palin so she can "spend more time" with her ever-growing family. But the debate reminded Republicans once again that it’s Palin, not McCain, who is their last hope for victory.
Rich concludes with perhaps the most damning assessment of Presidential Candidate John McCain he's yet put into words: "You have to wonder how long it will be before they plead with him to think of his health, get out of the way and pull the ultimate stunt of flipping the ticket. Palin, we can be certain, wouldn’t even blink."
Rich's column begs the question: Which scenario is scarier, a President John McCain, or a President Sarah Palin? All I know is either image is troubling enough to make sure we have as many voters registered and turned out in the days ahead to make sure those scenarios are never realized.